BLOG | C'est la Vie

Sarah Koenig opens "Serial," a 12-episode podcast, by telling listeners that she is certain of one thing: someone is lying.

She is referring to the lies told during the 1999 investigation of Hae Min Lee's murder. Hae was an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Md. She had been missing for six weeks when her body was discovered in Leakin Park. She was strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave.

The prosecution described the case as "run of the mill" domestic violence. This was not the detail that enthralled listeners and had us counting the minutes until a new episode aired each week. The interesting aspect of this particular murder was that the prosecution's key witness was, it seems, a pathological liar. And yet, Adnan Syed, ex-boyfriend of Hae, was convicted of her murder based on the testimony of that witness. His name is Jay Wilds.